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Saturday, 17 June 2017

German interlude: healing divisions

Last Thursday I went to vote in Britain’s surprise election
and then got on a plane and left the rest of the country to deal with the
fallout. The political situation in Britain is really toxic. But I’d rather
talk about my holiday in Germany and the interesting talk on trans matters I
had with one of my hosts.

Berlin is a place I’ve been to many times. Fascinating from
a historical point of view, if disturbing in so many ways. The city now is
vibrant and very liveable, despite the many problems that all big cities have.
This time I stayed with good friends, who are a gay couple.

Healing divisions

As far as sightseeing went, I visited Potsdamer Platz, which
used to be a bombed out wasteland with the Berlin Wall running through it but
is now a buzzing business district with new office blocks and the commercial
Sony Centre, a good place for a coffee. Some buildings have been placed right
over the old demarcation line, a symbol of the formerly divided city being
reunited.

Just up the road is the Holocaust memorial that covers the
site of Hitler’s infamous Bunker. It’s hard to know how to represent the
atrocity and the artist has created an undulating landscape crisscrossed by
avenues of concrete blocks that vary in height and tilt, a symbol of the
confusion of victims in a supposedly ordered system that has no human
connection. It certainly has a weird effect on the mind as you wander into it –
you can see a way out, yet you are hemmed by this dark oppressiveness.

The Soviet War Memorial, put up immediately the city was
captured, though it subsequently ended up in the British Sector when the city was divided among the four victorious powers, is now open to
the public. I am delighted to see that little sparrows have made their nests in
the barrels of the two tanks and two guns that form part of the monument.

Soviet T34 tank at Soviet War Memorial. You can just spot the little bird on the gun barrel.

Birdie living in a howitzer

You can’t go to Berlin without taking a photo of the famous
Brandenburg Gate …

The German Technology Museum is brilliant. Built around the
old train sheds of a bombed station, it has a wonderful collection of railway
locomotives and carriages, many locos in the characteristic black with red wheels.
The aviation and shipping galleries are superb, too, and the section on rockets
is important. I was interested to see a model of the German warships lying on
the bed of Scapa Flow, which I visited last year, and that the war rockets and
buzzbombs on display were all on loan from British institutions, as if a little
kid had asked for his ball back from the neighbour’s yard! Plus, there's a Dakota on the roof!

As well as Berlin itself I took a boat with my friends on the Wannsee lake
on the outskirts of the city to Kladow and we enjoyed lunch in a restaurant with a
beautiful walled garden shaded by trees. Even in these idyllic spots you can’t get away
from grim history, though – the boat passes the house of the Wannsee Conference where
the Final Solution was agreed early in 1942, and the nearby Glienicker Bridge
is where US and Soviet spies were exchanged during the Cold War.

Life’s better for all now with less political extremism,
distrust, hate and violence, I’d say. It’s pointless asking some of
contemporary politicians to note this fact, though.

Food and art

There was also the annual asparagus festival in neighbouring
Brandenburg. The North European Plain is dull, flat and rural and Brandenburg
is a fairly typical part of it. I’ve never been all that excited by asparagus
but the stalks grown here in the dark end up ghostly white and plump and, coupled
with a local lake fish, the Zander, they makes a tasty dinner. I tried this
fish elsewhere with ham and saffron rice and it was even better. By the way,
German wheat beers are wonderful.

I also spent a few days in Dresden, rebuilt largely as it
was before the 1945 air raids that destroyed the city. And very fine the
buildings look, too, like a small-scale St Petersburg that was built at much the same
time. They contain some of Europe’s most significant artworks and scientific instruments, collected and
commissioned by the Electors of Saxony. Dresden is relatively expensive, though,
being a bit of a tourist trap. However, it was very worth visiting.

The Frauenkirche. Controversially bombed, controversially reconstructed. But a building of great beauty and breathtaking boldness in design.

Pretend you're the artist Canaletto who's just been commissioned to paint views of Dresden. You even get an easel to line up your photo!

Dresden from the tower of the Schloss: the Opera House and River Elbe. What looks like a Turkish mosque in the background is actually an old cigarette factory!

Crossdressing German
style

Although I had brought my makeup and hair with me I didn’t,
in the end, go out in full femme. My clothes are virtually all female clothes
but are essentially unisex most of the time. The reason was that, although
Berlin is full of gay and trans people, my friends felt it was a little more
dangerous in their part of town. That’s their official version, which I’m not
really convinced by. But, in fact, I think they felt slightly uncomfortable
about it since they don’t fully understand trans matters. They already feel a
little bit discriminated against and not always well received as a gay couple
by their neighbours and perhaps compounding this by being seen in company with a TGirl was more
than they felt happy with. I feel one should respect one’s hosts’ wishes,
whatever the motive.

But I did have a long chat with one of my friends about
crossdressing, which he used to do a lot in his younger years with his mother’s
blessing (lucky boy). But for him it was just that he wanted to pretend he was
an air hostess or a princess, just for play. It was the role that was
important. He felt puzzled when I said I dress as a woman because it’s the
easiest way for people to identify what I am and that I want to be treated as a
woman, and I felt he was challenging me to prove I wasn’t just adopting a role
as he used to do. It’s hard to prove something that you yourself don’t understand
and nobody has yet come up with an explanation for. I think part of the lack of
understanding that gay people have for trans people stems from the fact that,
although we are often lumped together, there is no direct connection between
sexuality and gender. Being gay (or straight) is about who you like to sleep
with; being trans is who you feel you are.

Just to round this off, you may like to know that one ruler from
the junior lines of the house of Saxony, Augustus the Duke of
Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (reigned 1804-1822), was evidently transgender and liked
to be called Emilie. (His grandson Albert was Queen Victoria’s husband.) And it
seems like he was not the only one in that extended family to be. You see, you can't get away from the fact that transgender people have existed throughout history. Yet history shows also how little understood we are.

Emilie in boy mode

Mainly, though, I feel rested and that can only be good after a difficult 12 months.

10 comments:

Well, truth be told, German food isn't that great. Pork, noodles, sausages, sauerkraut, cherries, potatoes, that sort of thing. Most Germans prefer to eat at Italian and Chinese restaurants! But the beer is more carefully crafted than in the UK, is more refreshing and goes better with food. Sue x

After my PC meltdown it has taken a bit of time finding sites again and I've had a recent sadness, so I'm really happy to find your posting about Berlin and Dresden. I haven't visited Dresden, but the Germans do seem to know about reconstruction as while I lived there the Römerplatz in Frankfurt was added to, reproducing it as it was in earlier times. On my flickr site I do have pictures of Berlin prior to re-unification - the Glienecke Bridge, Brandenburg Gate etc. - so seeing these up-to-date pictures is great!

As for wheat beer, it's the only beer I drink nowadays (and for what it's worth, I find the COOP branded one the best!)